Vegas Vexation

Deep in the dim (very!) recesses of my mind, I keep a mental jotto on things. One category is Reasons To Dress Up All Fancy, but unless you're getting married or shuffling off to Buffalo, I can't think of any reasons. Another is Excuses To Use When Offered Asparagus, because I am reliably informed that "it looks like something the weed wacker spit up" is not polite.

Another is the eternal question, Vegas Vacay: Yea or Nay?  Reasons FOR include the proliferation of buffets and the chance to be given a lift by Wayne Newton if I wind up hitchhiking.

Reasons AGAINST start with the heat, and Celine Dion. And having to call Elton John "Sir."  And now, add grasshoppers to the list!

There are so many grasshoppers hopping around LV these days, they are showing up on weather radar, looking for all the world like a BA rainstorm.

It's not rain, it's bugs!

It's been rainy out there in Las Vegas  - in the first half of the year, they've already received more rain than they usually get in the whole year (4.2 inches). Because of all this rain, there has been what the bug people call a massive migration of grasshoppers who are visiting Las V on their way north.. The area has seen more rain in six months than the roughly 4.2 inches it typically gets in a year.

These critters are common in the desert, and they won't hurt you, unless you break an ankle running like a maniac when 237 of them light on your jacket at once.  And in a town that thrives on attractions to lure folks in by

the busload, people are standing around taking pictures and videos of black clouds of grasshoppers clustering under lights in the evenings.

Unlike their friend the lightning bug, grasshoppers don't carry a flashlight in their tail.

If you were around here in 1970, 1987, and 2004, you remember the invasion of 17-year locusts, whose deafening chirps make conversation all but impossible on late spring evenings.

I know you just did the math! They'll back in 2021!